🔗 Share this article Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped the Modern Globe There are numerous candidates to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor. According to a new book, though, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Before mechanised sawing, building a simple trading ship necessitated around 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than seven days.” Owing to this speedy mechanical cutter, that turned timber into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe. The Original True Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed the circular motion to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead one precise increment per cycle. “Each element was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to integrate them so they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each descending motion and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.” Which brings us up to the current challenge. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention. Circular to Vertical Design a machine that turns rotary movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components do not fall down.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the answer. Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.